Whitehall waste

In the midst of all the brouhaha engulfing the Government, a minister resigned with none of the fanfare warranted by the dramatic nature of his departure. Lord Agnew of Oulton, a businessman and minister for efficiency at the Cabinet Office, quit his post while addressing the Upper House about the eye-watering levels of fraud perpetrated during the lockdown.

Lord Agnew’s task was to defend the Government’s handling of the matter but he felt unable to do so. While money had to be speedily distributed to those forced to close during the pandemic, the procedures for doing so were “nothing less than desperately inadequate”. Whitehall oversight had been woeful and the Treasury appeared “to have no knowledge of, or little interest in, the consequences of fraud to our economy or society”. Lord Agnew spoke of “schoolboy errors” that allowed payments of “bounce-back” loans to 1,000 firms that were not even trading when the pandemic hit. Basic counter-fraud measures were not carried out, while the absence of scrutiny was “inexcusable”.

Since the ‘‘bounce-back’’ loan scheme involved payments of more than £40 billion – the size of the defence budget – these are serious charges of Whitehall indifference to the waste of taxpayers’ money. As Lord Agnew observed, were fraud across government properly controlled, it would save the equivalent of 1p on income tax. Instead, the Government is putting up National Insurance and freezing allowances, pushing the tax burden to its highest level for 70 years. Taking people’s earnings to spend wisely is one thing, squandering them quite another. Lord Agnew was right to resign. Is he the only one who takes this seriously?